View new posts | View your posts The Adventures of the Ecto-1Kinda

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Okay guys. I've visited this website hundreds and hundreds of times for reference photos, general nostalgia, and to check all the cool works of fans of Ghostbusters.

But I think this is really my first time posting on the forums.

Last night around midnight I finished my Ectomobile replica. It is largely done, save for some fiddly bits like a few antennas, warning stickers, and the side tubes.

Now I will tell you several things:

1) It is an ectomobile replica, not a Cadillac replica.
2) Liberties were taken on the roofrack and on the layout of the design so as to make the car look as good as possible on its own
3) I know forums all too-well, and they usually have a large number of nit-picking fanboys who will pounce upon the tiniest deviation in detail, yet do not have the skill, the intelligence, nor most importantly, the determination and desire to make their own props or cars. Hats off to all the guys who actually hunkered down and made their movie fancies real. This facet of forums actually never panned out here on GBProps, interestingly enough.
4) The car is 100% street-legal, meaning we can run the lights and the siren in daylight or at night and not worry about pesky police-impersonation or traffic laws.Well, not really.

and finally...

5) The car is completely badass. If you stand back and look at it, at the months spent doodling little pvc frames, at the days spent rummaging through ever second-hand store/junkyard/container store in the state, and the hours upon hours of working on a problem only to realize your original plan wouldn't work, causing you to smash your brain into a wall repeatedly until an alternative, if not better, idea comes to mind.... it is truly amazing.

So, if you can handle that, do you want to see it?

-Kevin

must see pics....must see pics.....must see pics......must see pics

The cross will be put on the satellite dish tonight, there will be more blue parts, and the red 'binocular guns' will be finished this weekend.



What do you think?

Looks great! Its not to busy with decals and such! Very clean lookning.Keep up the good work!

I like it.. I think that a gb unit now days with the price of gas.. probably go with something along these lines.. I like the fact you can run with lights on too..

Yeah, we're actually going to try to get purple domes for the lights, since red, blue, and green are all illegal.

Oh just so you know, the cross is partly cut out of the original dish. It's an open oval that's horizontal if you look really close as the ecto1A is pulling up to the mueseum.

Wait, you can run those on the street?!?!?!?! What state are you in?! I'm moving there!!!

Yeah, I know. One of the first materials I bought for the project was actually a big roll of black screen for the cross. I am cautious to cut it out, don't want to warp or ruin the dish. If this project has taught me anything, it's that I destroy everything I touch.

I live in colorado. I've talked to about a third of the police force here in town, and I bugged tons of state troopers about how I could get legal lights. Their biggest concern is that we would be confused with an emergency services vehicle. We were told that as soon as we had the dish and roofrack and all that on top, officers would side with us in case someone though we were an emergency vehicle.

We have to be really careful about running the lights at night, because they are so bright that they can blind other drivers.

Our rule of thumb is to never run the lights if another car is less than 1/4 mile ahead of us on the road.

As I said, blue, green, and red lights are illegal. Amber is for tow trucks and the like.

I like it. this has been said already, but it is very clean and has the right amount of decals. Makes me want to start my PT cruiser conversion soon

Thanks! That means a lot!

I loved how flashy the Ecto-1A was, but I have always like the pure white, red, and blues of the original car. The starkness of the original car is so cool....

but then I did a photoshop with the stripes and went "aw hell... now I have to!"

Wow, everytime I've seen a non-59 cadillac ecto replica, it doesn't do it for me. I don't know why, but this time it's different. It looks like you did a real quality job. It looks great! If you can get away with purple lights, that would be fantastic, as purple is a lot closer to blue than amber.

Pfff, as I recall, I did the photoshop... lol

Looks great Kev.

Hahaha... yes you did. But I didn't end up using your design, did I? God I hate you Will.

Guys, Benwahballboy is the fool who is building our awesome packs. Close friend of mine, the heart of the Ghostbusters. Or the penis. I... don't know.

This is the photoshop I am talking about.
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=3389727

That was used to plot what text we wanted on the sides... and also to drool over the prospect of purple lights...

Oh man, you have no idea what that means to me. I know what you're talking about when you say that non-caddys are usually kind of stingy. I am lucky because it is absolute coincidence that my first car is a white wagon.

I think that is because they are either the wrong color, disproportionate to the size of the car, or just shoddily-made.

Granted, a lot of people have made a truly noble effort with supersoaker parts and magnets, hats off to them. When I was in high school I put a bunch of boxes and spray-painted tupperware on top of the car, with big foam fins... unfortunately the whole outfit peeled off when I hit 40mph, before I got to school The satellite dish was $20 on eBay, the graphics were about $15 each at a local shop (as opposed to $80 magnets that could be STOLEN!), and everything else was scrounged out of Home Depot.

Oh, and the lights were about $900... my first and only purchase on a credit card... haha.

This time around, I am trying really hard to maintain a stream-lined look to the car. I've always liked Outback wagons, they were the most macho wagons until the Magnum came along (ugh).

I'll have more pictures up today... been so busy I can only play with my new toy after 10pm...

lol

Didn't I make the first image showing the wonderfully bad ass yellow and black caution stripe on the lower portion? Meh, either way, get some purple covers already!

There it is... bear in mind that I still have the tubes and a bunch of gadgets to put on the roof!


I love having free doors like that...


Instead of two GINORMOUS tanks on one side, we opted to make a pair of "dualies", four tanks attaches twins... Another deviation from the original, but this was for the sake of adding detail where the was none.



Paid some high schoolers to clean and detail the interior of my car... everything is now a shiny black... slicker than a lizard in Jerry Lewis's hair. Black and red 12-gauge cables run twirling over my dash and into the front fender from my door... gives the interior a nice 'mechanical' feel... slightly.

[img][/img]
Control box and cd player for outer sound... switches are reated for high amperage. Going to add rocker safety switches just for kicks... the goal is that when we power up the lights, we hit switches that look like they belong on the arming pad for a nuclear weapon!

[img][/img]
One of the two side tubes I'll be mounting with magnets this week.

Now I am going off to work on the binocs.... tell me what you think!

-Kevin

SO TELL US WHAT PEOPLE SAY WHEN YOU DRIVE DOWN THE STREET. HAVE YOU DONE IT WITH A GB UNIFORM??????? LET ME TELL YOU THAT I LOVE YOUR CAR!!!!!!!

SAL

Sal do you know how many internet rules you're breaking when you type in all capital letters? Well.. You're breaking one, and that is, to not type in all capital letters.

CAPS LOCK is CRUISE CONTROL for COOL!

all caps isnt that bad. its when people StArT tYpInG LiKe ThIs ThAt GeTs AnNoYiNg. those people should just be shot

*Throws em at Kenoi* >.> shot! Get it?!

No seriously,Ecto96 has a point.All Caps is interpreted(sp?) as one is yelling at you.

So please,try not to post all in caps.

That aside,the Ecto replica looks great.

So... since people seem to ignore the Ecto-1K thread... I'll recap everything over to here...


-Original Ecto-1K... 1998 Subaru Outback, rolled out on September 26, 2006. OFFICIALLY completed (hoses and rear tanks) around October 12th.


-Yup yup, cool stuff yes?


-Oh no! After five months of work the car is totaled by a semi-truck five days before Halloween! Oh balls! The damage doesn't look that bad, but most of the stuff that had to be replaced was internal (i.e. gas tank, frame, both rear quarter panels....)


-Picture from the newspaper article telling the story of the car and the accident. The article appeared in the local section of the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

In order to commemmorate the original car, we shot video of it going up and down the streets of Fort Collins on the night before I would take it apart for the last time. The car was already scheduled to end up at a junkyard in Denver, but I wasn't going to give it up until I found a replacement.

Tribute video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ie1uYznOmQ

New car bought in Colorado Springs on November 22, 2006. A white(ish) and bronze(ish) 2003 Subaru Outback.


In front of CSU administration... looked cool.


The car is in fact off-white (a truth that bugs the shit out of me to NO end), but it is never as noticable as in this pic. Bollocks.




Control panel, this time mounted in the dash... MUCH better than the original SquidBox.

-Conversion of the new car took place around December 12, 2006 when we took it to Grand Junction. We went there to pick up Running Fool and help him through the colorado leg of his cross-country human baton relay.




-Around Christmas the big blizzards hit. We take the car (which is all-wheel drive) around town and help stranded motorists. It seemed like a nice thing to do. This little adventure gets us another article in the newspaper. Unfortunately they used the picture of the original car, but no worries, it was rushed anyway.
http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/NEWS01/612300321

-In late January we took a local dj and film critic and media personality extraordinaire on several ride-alongs to help with an article he wanted to write about us.

Check one of his sites here:[url] http://www.myspace.com/orcho5000
[/url]


One more picture with Dayl, our guestbuster of the evening.

-Early February I finally get around to adding some stuff to the roofrack like the sonobouy, and a paintball hopped I found that looked suspiciously like a radar device. The goal of all this was to make the car more interesting to look at from the right side, which was otherwise pretty barren.




-Around this time I took the car to Denver with some friends, mostly just to get out of Fort Collins. Some pictures from that day...


Splash!


A clean ecto is a happy ecto.


Ghost in the machine? No... not really.

On the way home we encountered some serious fog... of course I had to run the lights and take some pictures...


On Valentines Day we were asked by a local DJ to put the car on display in front of Hodi's Half-Note, a newly-opened music venue, for his first show there. His schtick is 80s Dance Party, so he wanted us to be there. It was a blast.

Flyer...


That's him, Magic Cyclops. Check his site here http://www.myspace.com/thequadcitymadman


My friend Becca in her Koopa Troopa cosplay outfit... completed the 80s night, don't you think? Oh, and of course it has to snow on the one night we're asked to have the car on display, right?

Shortly after that night I added another blue hose and a voltage gauge in a custom housing to the right side of the car. I swapped the sonobouy to the right side as well, making room, for our weather vane. The weathervane is simply up there to add a little bit of animation to the whole thing while it's in motion.

And last night I got a phone call from a guy that comes to our store a lot. Apparently his car (a Honda Prelude) was unable to start (alternator or distributor problem), and he needed to tow his car home. He originally called Vincent, my roommate, who has a Nissan Pathfinder. He then asked if it would be possible for the ecto to tow him home. Of course it was possible, and probably a better idea since my car was lower to the ground; we didnt run the risk of ripping off his bumper.

It turns out that Magic Cyclops is doing his 80s party every wednesday night, so we have once again been invited to put the car in front of Hodi's and show up to the dance party.

"What's that? You want to put the car on display again? Let me help!" -God

(taken this morning)

FUN!

More later, I suppose!

Holy crap!

That's the cover for our article in the local newspaper. The cover of the actual paper... front page.... I am... incredulous!

Go to http://www.rmchronicle.com for the article!!

Wow you guys are lucky, we've been asked alot of questions and even talked to a reporter from the local newspaper, but never had so much asked of us. Keep up the good work. I'm sure once we're more finished with the car, we'll get more attention ourselves, specially when we start filming.

You can read the whole article here!

http://www.rmchronicle.com/index.php?op ... iew&id=628

We've been asked by a local band to put the car on display again, this time in front of the local Aggie Theater. The band is working on their own version of the ghostbusters theme and they want us on stage with them.

It's going to be fun.... I'll post pictures as soon as we're done!

Cleaning the car today I took notice of a lot of wear and tear to the rack. I'll likely be taking it down sometime next week and disassembling it to repaint and fix a lot of the parts.

Other than that... check out our article... what are you waiting for?

Yeah tomorrow I'm stripping my ecto's roof rack of it's parts to repaint it. The winter salt and snow was not kind to it. The black is quickly turning rusty red, especially on the back, and the white is also turning red. Even though there's hardly anything up there, all the wiring for the new spotlights on top, and the siren speakers will be enough to be a pain in the @$$.

Initial pictures from Friday night... video and pics of us onstage soon to come!

So the St. Patrick's Day parade here in Fort Collins was a blast. We brought up the rear of the parade, and we represented our business, a local gaming center. Kids from the store showed up and we decked them out in some costumes we had laying around. Luckily it wasn't too hot just yet.

Unfortunately we blew out our fuses for the lights less than a third of the way through the parade.

The spectators went totally batshit f-ing loco for us.]